Hawk (A Stepbrother Romance #3)(11)

I bolted for the water and ran in after her, chased her, splashed her. Our bodies collided in the water. Nothing feels like soft, smooth skin underwater. Her legs slipped around me once and she gave me an odd, almost confused look before she wriggled away and swam deeper into the waves, and I followed.

There were water slides and all that but we spent the entire day in the wave pool, just swimming around and circling each other like the world's most confused sharks. The only time we separated was to head into the bathhouses and get changed and dry off. Alex just put her t-shirt and shorts on over her bathing suit and her hair was damp. Even now, if I smell chlorine, it reminds me of the smell of her hair as she sat next to me on the back of the bus and put her head on my shoulder.

She slept all the way home. I stayed awake, looking around the bus, wondering when somebody, a teacher or whoever, was going to give us shit for displaying affection in public. When no one did, I put my arm around her and she settled against my side, yawned without waking and put her arm around me.

Somebody was watching us. One of the teachers. I never had her, she was too new, she just started teaching to years before, right before the bridge collapsed. She was weirdly shy for a teacher and tall for a woman. Lots of my friends had crushes on her, and the more crude ones talked about her until somebody told them to shut the f*ck up. She looked tired and lonely sitting there watching us from the corner of her eye, toying with the end of her super long braid. I swear the thing was past her waist.

She could have said something any time but she never did, just kept an eye on us now and then. Not like I'd try anything on the bus.

As the journey home rolled on, I started to dread the end of the trip when Alexis would wake up and pull away from me and the magic moment would be over. It was like that morning still; I looked at her and saw all that she was all these years, but now I looked at her and saw something else, too. It changed the way I remembered everything. That day she was standing on the rock with the rays of light shining down between the trees, she was changed in my mind into this wood nymph, delicate and lovely.

As we rode that bus and her head bobbed on my shoulder and she chewed her bottom lip in her sleep, I felt stupid. How had I never seen this before? She was gorgeous. She is gorgeous. I felt like I'd never seen her before.

So I decided that after our last day of school, I would take her out and tell her. I'd take her on a date. A real date. I told her to dress up, and there was a curious look in her eye and she agreed. I had a suit and tie picked out, I was taking her to Baker's, a fancy place overlooking the river. I was going to tell her. Lay it all out. Take her hands in mine and look her in the eye and tell her the truth. Three little words I'd been dying to say.

I felt like it was the whole reason I had existed at all.

Unfortunately, my father picked that day to leave his office door open.

Curiosity, they say, killed the cat. I thought he was out of the house. I was still curious. I'd poked around and asked questions that whole year, I even talked to the medical examiner once. Everyone agreed my mom had a stroke. It was unfortunate, and unlikely, but those are the breaks, kid. You pays your quarter, you takes your chances. A doctor told me she might have had a heart arrhythmia she didn't notice and it clotted the blood in her heart, something like that. Just bad luck.

My father's office is on the first floor of the house. The whole house is huge, a sprawling monstrosity that could house ten people and have room for ten more. The office is a good sized chunk of the entire floor, and was originally a family room or something like that. One side is all glass block windows, the far side holds his desk and bookcases full of antiques. He kept his computer on the desk.

I stepped inside and felt like I was parting a veil, stepping across the threshold. Nobody went in his office. I had no idea why it was unlocked, and the door open. It had to be something important, but I never found out. I crept across the room, weaving around the guest chairs and cocktail table, and slipped behind his desk. The computer didn't even have a screensaver.

My fingers hovered over the keyboard. I had no idea what I was looking for. What would be on his computer?

I should check his email, I thought. I started typing the address in the bar and when I typed m-e by accident instead of m-a and the search autocompleted it as methyl iodide.

Curious, I hit the return key and let it load a search.

It was a chemical, a banned pesticide. One of the search results was methyl iodide poisoning, so I clicked that.

I read the list of symptoms. Confusion. Aphasia. Blackouts.

Stroke symptoms.

Then, my father walked into the room.





Alexis





Now





I clutch May's arm so hard she chirps, "ow!" and shakes loose of my grip. I crush handfuls of my shirt in my fists instead. Tom is right over there, looking at us as we slink away. God, he's going to smell Hawk on me. Great, now he's headed this way. As Hawk walks off with his brother, Tom strides down the sidewalk and May and I both stop. I may look calm on the outside, I hope I look calm on the outside, but I feel like I just swallowed a lizard and it's trying to eat its way out of my stomach. May looks to me for a way to handle this.

"Did he bother you?" Tom says.

"Bother me?"

"No, I was just surprised."

May looks nervous. She bites her lip and hugs herself the way she does when she wants to escape notice and slink into the background. She takes a half step behind me, too. I stand my ground, shoulders back. Nothing wrong here, I'm not hiding anything.